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What is The Future of Voice Search and SEO?

20th October 2017

Siri, Alexa, Cortana and other digital assistants are slowly but surely altering the way in which we search the web. Although once a novelty, voice search is becoming increasingly more popular and, in time, may even exceed traditional search methods, such a typing on a keyboard. In fact, these digital assistants are predicted to be the future of SEO.

Just when you thought you’d mastered mobile SEO, you’re now encouraged to optimise your site for voice search. The best place to start is to understand how it works and how it differs from traditional types of search. It’s your job as a digital marketing expert to stay on top of trends like these so that you are always one step ahead of your competitors. So, if you want make the most of voice search for your SEO, start today by reading all about it below.

What is Voice Search?

The World Wide Web offers an immeasurable amount of information, making search absolutely necessary. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to find what we were looking for. However, it’s not always practical entering our queries onto a keyboard, particularly on a small mobile phone.

As an alternative, researchers have developed a way using voice-recognition algorithms to assemble speech on smartphones and place equivalent text in the user’s search box in just seconds. This is performed in the cloud, allowing it to work exceptionally well in terms of both speed and precision. It is a lot more conversational in tone than other types of search, most commonly used on mobile and concentrates on location.

What Are the Benefits of Voice Search?

The emergence of voice search and its enhancing functionality diminishes the need to fiddle with little keyboards or scroll through various menus and apps. Many smartphones actually come equipped with voice recognition technology as a major feature, such as Apple’s Siri.

Since smartphones are typically used by the same person, voice search adapts to the various accents and pronunciations and returns results with location accuracy. As a result, voice search is becoming increasingly more popular. By 2020, predictions suggest that over half of our queries will be spoken rather than typed.

Although voice search can be used on PC’s, home devices or virtually anything with an Internet connection, it is predominantly used on smartphones. This makes it portable and, subsequently, extremely convenient in the fast-paced 21st Century.

Furthermore, these digital assistants tend to display between one and four results as opposed to millions. As a result, it is a lot easier and quicker to find the answer you were looking for. For search engine optimisers who are able to secure one of those hot spots, a high click through rate can be expected.

How Can I Optimise for Voice Search?

Since the tone of voice search is a lot more natural than typing jumbled words and phrases into a box, the queries are often longer. With that in mind, you should consider the types of questions people may ask that would bring them to your site. Try and reflect on the way in which questions are phrased in an everyday manner and mimic this. Once you have those questions in mind, why not test them out and see what sort of content shows up? Then you can create Q&A themed blog posts and product descriptions that are optimised for the queries you’ve come up with. Questions and answers should not be reserved for FAQ pages; however, this is a great place to start.

You must make sure your website has great user experience on mobile, since this is the platform where voice search is most commonly used. You don’t want to increase your bounce rate by drawing visitors to a badly optimised website. This involves more than just a responsive design; you must also work on aspects like the site speed and the content. By monitoring the site’s performance both on desktop and mobile, you should be able to spot any problems with user experience.

In the coming months and years, we can expect a rise in the implementation of voice search technology, so stay ahead of the game and make sure you’re ready. It’s never too early to start optimising.

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